North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland (CPRF) says the policies of Seoul are responsible for the growing tension in the Korean Peninsula. The organisation, which supervises in Pyongyang the inter-Korean relations, reacted to South Korea’s announced sanctions against Taiwan companies suspected of arms sales with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
In the Committee’s statement, published on Sunday, the organisation criticises South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye as she was unwilling to respond to Pyongyang’s peace initiatives and developed further the military cooperation with the United States and Japan under the pretext of a "nuclear threat from the North" and "violated human rights" in the DPRK.
These activities of Park Geun-hye and her allies, the statement reads, "damage greatly the relations between the North and the South and develop further the tension in the Korean Penisula."

June 25 will mark 65 years to the day that the Korean War began. And its painful consequences can still be felt today. The line drawn in 1945 across the 38th parallel to delimit the zone where the Soviet and U.S. armed forces accepted Japan’s capitulation to end the Second World War continues to separate the two Koreas – the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the Republic of Korea to the south – seven decades later. On both sides of the demilitarized zone – the provisional border between the countries – the two Koreas have been building up their armies, with thousands of troops equipped with the most up-to-date weapons and military equipment ready to engage the enemy. And it is not just Korean soldiers. In accordance with the U.S.–South Korea Collective Defense Agreement, more than 25,000 U.S. troops are currently deployed on South Korean soil under the command of the United States Forces Korea (USFK), which is headed by an American general.

Four new cases of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) have been registered in South Korea, bringing the total number of cases to 179, the country’s health ministry said on Wednesday.
A total of 27 people have died from the disease.

Navigating busy two-lane highways can mean drivers often can't see the road for the cars and take a risk that can prove fatal when they attempt to overtake large vehicles like transport trucks.

The Korean technology giant Samsung wants to reduce that risk with the help of technology that allows drivers to virtually see "through" the vehicles ahead of them. Using monitors mounted on the back of a truck or other large vehicle and connected wirelessly to a camera in front, Samsung's Safety Truck technology shows drivers what's ahead of the 18-wheeled obstruction they're driving behind — day or night.

"We are fully aware of the destructive role of the joint military activity of the Republic of Korea and the United States in the region and openly tell our American and South Korean partners about this," the Federation Council speaker said at a meeting with chairman of North Korea’s (DPRK) Supreme People’s Assembly Choe Thae-bok.
According to Matviyenko, "The situation on the Korean Peninsula still gives no grounds for complacency." The Federation Council speaker said that "periodic aggravation of the situation coincides in time with the annual US-South Korean exercises, some aspects of which are often just provocative."
"We have been constantly urging all parties to exercise maximum restraint, avoid any statements or actions that may lead to the further aggravation of the situation on the Korean Peninsula," she said.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry has called the ceremony dedicated to the opening of a UN human rights office in Seoul on Tuesday a politically motivated provocation, the ministry’s statement said.
"This criminal act will inevitably lead to the escalation of tensions on the Korean peninsula," the Foreign Ministry statement said. Pyongyang insists that this office is "a center for collecting misinformation concocted by defectors from the North with a view of implementing the hostile US policy towards North Korea."
The hostile forces, "seek by all means to tarnish the reputation of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea and overthrow its social system using the non-existent problem of human rights violations," the statement says. The ministry warned that "North Korea would retaliate" and would take "the most resolute measures."

US Democratic Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton said Russia, North Korea and Iran are traditional security threats to the United States during her first major campaign speech on Saturday in New York.

South Korea is plagued with a rising death toll in its third week as the MERS virus spreads throughout the country. Analysts believe the outbreak will worsen the economy, as tourists stay away and locals remain at home.

South Korea is plagued with a rising death toll in its third week as the MERS virus spreads throughout the country. Analysts believe the outbreak will worsen the economy, as tourists stay away and locals remain at home.

I am starting to wonder if the Typhus outbreaks that swept Germany in the closing days of WW2 were deliberate on the part of the allies. The Soviets had weaponized Typhus starting in 1928. Typhus appeared suddenly among the German troops only after they invaded the Soviet Union, and through the troops spread back into Germany.

It has now been confirmed that 30 people in South Korea have contracted MERS, a deadly virus from the same family as SARS, and officials believe that number is going to grow. Two people have died, and another 1,364 people are currently being quarantined. The Korean government has closed down over 230 schools to prevent the infection from spreading.

MERS, which stands for Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus, is a relatively new virus discovered in Saudi Arabia in 2012. According to the CDC, people who contract MERS wind up with a severe and often deadly acute respiratory illness.

A number of countries are beginning to require Japan to place region-of-origin labeling on its food products to ensure that anything coming from the radiation-infested regions surrounding the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant are adequately screened for contamination. The decisions by countries such as Taiwan and South Korea have angered Japanese officials, who are turning to the globalist World Trade Organization to force the countries to abolish their protective regulations.

The United States tried but failed to sabotage North Korea's nuclear weapons program with a computer virus in 2010, Reuters reported Friday.

The cyber attack came at the same time the Stuxnet virus was disrupting Iran's uranium-enrichment efforts, according to sources familiar with the stealth effort. Stuxnet was reportedly created by the United States and Israel.

The North Korea attack involved a Stuxnet variant that was designed to activate "when it encountered Korean-language settings on an infected machine," Reuters writes. But U.S. agents were never able to install the malware on the computers controlling Pyongyang's nuclear program.

Webmaster's Commentary:

There is cause to suspect that Stuxnet exacerbated the Fukushima disaster by crippling emergency systems using the targeted Siemens' controllers. And despite the danger, the US went ahead and tried again with North Korea's nuclear weapons!

South Korean authorities introduce new regulations over smartphones usage.
Specially developed spyware is required to be installed into the phones of those under 19 years old.
Such a pattern of control is widely used by its Northern neighbour.
However, the Seoul Communications Commission claims that it requires telecom companies and parents to ensure a monitoring app for the sake of children's security.
New software is intended to block access to pornography, send a child's location data to parents and issue an alert when a child searches keywords such as 'suicide', 'pregnancy' and 'bully' or receives messages with those words.
The measure is reported to slowly come into force over the next few years as it doesn't require old smartphones be updated, but most schools in South Korea send out letters to parents encouraging them to install the software anyway.

Speaker of Russia’s State Duma, Sergei Naryshkin has praised the position taken by the South Korean government that showed unwillingness to follow in the footsteps of the U.S. and the EU and did not join the anti-Russian sanctions.
State Duma Speaker: Moscow, Seoul to be able to eliminate shrinkage of trade http://tass.ru/en/russia/795441
Russia interested in gradual unification of Korean nation — lawmakerhttp://tass.ru/en/world/795466

North Korea “continues to pursue nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, it continues to break promises and make threats, and it continues to show flagrant disregard for international laws,” Kerry said during a joint news conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se in Seoul on Monday.

This week, North Korea’s dynastic leader, Kim Jong-un, was beaming from ear to ear as a Pukgeukseong-1 missile shot out of the water, apparently launched by a new “Sinpo” class strategic submarine. For Kim, Christmas arrived early.

South Korean military officials say North Korea has test-fired three anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea, one day after warning it would strike South Korean vessels without notice if they intrude into the North's territorial waters.

Officials in Seoul say the missiles were fired over the span of about an hour Saturday from an area near the eastern port city of Wonsan.

Earlier Saturday, Pyongyang said it has successfully test-fired a submarine-based ballistic missile, in what would be an indication of the country's advancing military technology.

North Korea is making waves with the reported test launch of a submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) – a game-changing “world-level strategic weapon,” according to leader Kim Jong-Un. If confirmed, the test would violate existing UN resolutions.

Kim personally oversaw the launch, the state-run KCNA agency reports. The report detailed how the launcher submarine dived at the sound of a combat alarm to test fire the missile.

"After a while, the ballistic missile soared into the sky from underwater," KCNA added. However, time and place of the test was not provided.

Although everyone’s favorite basket-case nation hasn’t been in the news much lately, it would stupid to disregard them at any time. North Korea has a habit of rearing its ugly head when we least expect it. But unlike past examples of aggression and posturing, someday we may face a North Korea on the brink of collapse. When that happens, it will make all previous incidents look pale in comparison.

Recently, National Interest Magazine posed the question, If North Korea Collapses: What Happens to Its Nightmare Weapons of War? The answer was not a pretty one.

A U.S.-organized event on North Korea’s human rights briefly turned into chaos at the U.N. on Thursday as North Korean diplomats insisted on reading a statement of protest, amid shouts from defectors, and then stormed out.

The U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Samantha Power, tried to quiet the diplomats at the event that featured more than 20 defectors. She later called North Korea’s statements “totally self-discrediting.”

When the hacking of Sony’s computer system produced a brouhaha of ridiculous proportions, the government’s pet “experts” were quick to blame North Korea. The rationale: Since Sony was releasing a pretty awful anti-North Korean propaganda film, it was only obvious that King Jong-un was personally responsible. Besides that, the attack supposedly originated in a region of cyberspace inhabited by North Korea’s pathetic Internet superstructure.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has assigned the Justice Ministry with inking an extradition agreement with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the legal information portal reported on Monday.
The draft agreement was earlier approved by the government.
The agreement will allow extradition if crimes are punishable by at least one-year prison term.

North Korea seeks to develop cooperation with Russia on peaceful use of outer space, a deputy head of the North Korean committee on space technology told TASS on Friday.
"The DPRK will develop proactive cooperation in the sphere of peaceful use of outer space with foreign organizations and countries, including Russia, on egual and mutually beneficial basis," Pak Hyon Su said.
He expressed hope that Russia and North Korea would "open a new page of bilateral space research cooperation" in 2015.
"The DPRK space program has peaceful purposes, and this country, like Russia, is against militarization of space," the official said.

North Korea dismisses the United States plans to deploy the THAAD missile defense system in South Korea as a dangerous military provocation, a spokesman for Pyongyang’s National Peace Committee said on Friday.
In case of the deployment of THAAD, which is a key element of the US anti-ballistic missile defense, "South Korea will turn into an American nuclear arsenal aimed at carrying out a preventive strike at any time on the territory of North Korea and a number of other countries of the Northeast Asia," according to the organization.
This step "should be considered as a dangerous military provocation that can cause a nuclear catastrophe," the statement stresses.
In response to the THAAD deployment, North Korea "will strengthen its nuclear deterrence forces," the statement reads.

What matters is that the US, while it is a declining world power, is still militarily powerful, dangerous and destructive, even as its empire building is weakening and its forces are in retreat. As Mahatma Gandhi once stated about the declining British Empire, ‘It’s the aging tiger that becomes the man eater’.

South Korea said on Thursday it has decided to seek to be a founding member of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), another key U.S. ally joining the China-led institution despite Washington's misgivings.

North Korea's military on Sunday threatened to blow up balloons that South Korean activists plan to send over the heavily-militarised border carrying 10,000 DVDs of the satirical Hollywood film "The Interview".

. . . . although the air force finished dismantling its highly lethal MX missiles in 2005 to comply with arms control agreements, it is significantly improving its remaining ICBMs by installing the MX's high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles on Minuteman ICBMs, and it has upgraded the Minuteman's guidance systems to match the MX's accuracy.

The U.S. Army is sending a field artillery battalion of about 400 soldiers and multiple-launch rocket systems to South Korea, a move the Pentagon said on Friday was part of a reorganization of the service and unrelated to any tensions on the peninsula.

Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said a battalion from the 20th Field Artillery would deploy from Fort Hood, Texas, in June for a nine-month rotation at Camp Casey in South Korea as part of the 210th Field Artillery Brigade.

When Wired published its article, “The Plot to Free North Korea with Smuggled Episodes of ‘Friends,’” it probably hoped that its impressionable, politically ignorant audience would not pick up on the underlying facts and their implications, and simply see a “cute” anecdote poking fun at the besieged East Asian country while inflating their own sense of unwarranted cultural superiority.

What they missed, of course, is the fact that the program peddled by Wired as the work of “the North Korea Strategy Center and its 46-year-old founder, Kang Chol-hwan,” is in fact funded and organized instead by the US State Department...

North Korea will participate in the creation of advanced development zones in Russia’s Far East, and a model of such a zone can be applied to its own territory, says a protocol signed following Pyongyang’s delegation visit to Russia.
In particular, Russia is ready to consider extraterritorial models where the trilateral cooperation will be developing on the territory of North Korea. Pyongyang is interested in Russia attracting a third party, including South Korea, as an investor and performer as part of a project on electric power supplies to North Korea.

The U.S. Ambassador to South Korea has been hospitalized after a knife-wielding man attacked him in broad daylight at a breakfast meeting Thursday morning in Seoul.

Korean media reports that someone yelled 'North Korea and South Korea should be unified' and 'No to war training!' before a bloodied Ambassador Mark Lippert was seen leaving the Sejong Center around 7:40am local time.

The attacker appears to have slashed Lippert on the right cheek and left wrist. The State Department says the injuries are non-life-threatening and that Lippert is in stable condition at a nearby hospital. He was last reported in surgery as of 8:15pm ET.

U.S. Ambassador Mark Lippert was attacked by a man wielding a razor and screaming that the rival Koreas should be unified, South Korean police and media said Thursday. TV images showed Lippert bleeding from his head and wrist, but his injuries weren't immediately clear. He was taken to a hospital for treatment.

The South Korean police state has cracked down, with varying degrees of intensity over the years, on virtually any public expression of leftism, including anti-capitalism, anti-colonialism, and anti-imperialism. Some degree of intolerance of leftist dissent is emblematic of all states in capitalist societies. Even in liberal democratic societies, which are believed to tolerate dissent to a higher degree than other societies, the security services have had a long history of surveillance “on the side of the political/economic status quo” and against those “who challenge the powerful and the wealthy.” The history of the political police in such societies is one of “conservatism” where “the targets of state surveillance form a kind of roster of (working class) radicalism” and where those who pursue the class war from the bottom up have been seen as subverting “the proper political and economic order” and therefore are deemed legitimate subjects for surveillance and disruption.

The US Treasury Department has the authority to impose secondary sanctions on foreign entities, working with the DPRK, but the Obama’s administration does not appear willing to expand its interpretation of the executive order.

Webmaster's Commentary:

Probably because every time the US sanctions someone, they run off to join BRICS!

Jewish rights groups have expressed their shock and outrage after a BBC news correspondent made comments claiming that Palestinians "suffer at Jewish hands" during Sunday's mega demonstration against terrorism in Paris, with some accusing him of blatant anti-Semitism.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So much for the French/Israeli respect for freedom of expression! The BBC reporter was forced to apologize for a comment which is in fact the truth!

The top intelligence official in the United States for the first time attributed the security breach suffered by Sony Pictures Entertainment to his North Korean counterpart and called it “the most serious cyberattack ever made against US interests.”

An analysis of the timestamps on some of the leaked documents shows that they were downloaded at USB 2.0 speeds -- which implies an insider.

Our Gotnews.com investigation into the data that has been released by the "hackers" shows that someone at Sony was copying 182GB at minimum the night of the 21st -- the very same day that Sony Pictures' head of corporate communications, Charles Sipkins, publicly resigned from a $600,000 job. This could be a coincidence but it seems unlikely. Sipkins's former client was NewsCorp and Sipkins was officially fired by Pascal's husband over a snub by the Hollywood Reporter.

There is no hard evidence for the United States’ claims that the North Korea was behind the hack on Sony. In fact, the evidence seems to point in a very different direction. Reports in US and global media say experts taking part in the investigation essentially rule out North Korea’s participation. They say the evidence simply isn’t there to point that finger.

Moreover, those very same experts point out that due to the complexity of the cyberattack it is not quite possible to determine who was behind it in mere 48 or 72 hours as was the case with the US government. Rather than seeing the evidence and drawing conclusions from that, it seems that Washington is pursuing a political agenda and using this issue to further that agenda.

US President Barack Obama signed an executive order on Friday authorizing the imposition of new sanctions against certain North Korean entities in the wake of the recent Sony hack the White House continues to blame on Pyongyang.

Webmaster's Commentary:

There is zero evidence that north Korea had anything to do with the SONY hack and quite a bit of evidence it was an internal hack by a disgruntled employee. This is Obama's version of Saddam's nuclear weapons; a made up threat to provoke another nation into war.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said in a New Year's speech Thursday that he is open to more talks or even a summit with his South Korean counterpart, a statement welcomed by Seoul, which in turn urged the North to take concrete steps toward normalization of relations.

Kim's call for improving inter-Korea relations comes as Pyongyang is facing heightened criticism over its human rights record and souring ties with Washington over allegations it was involved in the massive hacking attack on Sony Pictures linked to "The Interview," a dark comedy that portrayed an assassination attempt on Kim.

Webmaster's Commentary:

This move by North Korea looks like a hopeful one, if the US government doesn't manage to muck it up because it needs a war with North Korea as a back door to a war with China.

resident Kim was giving his new year message broadcast on state television.

He said if Pyongyang's conditions were met, he would even be prepared to hold a summit meeting with South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

South Korea said the move was "meaningful", and talks should include "practical and frank discussions on all issues of mutual concern".

"Our government hopes for dialogue between the South and North Korean authorities in the near future without limits on format," said Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae, quoted by the South's Yonhap news agency.

On Monday, Mr Ryoo had called for dialogue to resume on issues including reunions for families separated by the Korean War, adding that he hoped North Korea would respond positively.

He offered to meet in Seoul, Pyongyang or any other South or North Korean city agreed with North Korean officials.

an you imagine a foreign movie dedicated to assassinating Barack Obama? Not just that, but proceeding to display it in loving detail – along with the president defecating in his pants minutes before the final attack?

It might be considered an act of war.

I’m a First Amendment maven – sure, Sony has the right to make this movie.

First it was, with "absolute certainly", North Korea. Then, out of the blue, an even more ridiculous theory emerged about the origin of the Sony hackers: Russia. Now, we finally get the truth, and as it turns out it was neither of the abovementioned sovereign actors who had nothing better to do than to hack movie scripts and racist emails: it was Sony's own disgruntled worker who was the source of the hack. According to Politico, FBI agents investigating the Sony Pictures hack were briefed Monday by a security firm that says its research points to laid-off Sony staff, not North Korea, as the perpetrator.

"Researchers from the cyber intelligence company Norse have said their own investigation into the data on the Sony attack doesn’t point to North Korea at all and instead indicates some combination of a disgruntled employee and hackers for piracy groups is at fault."

Webmaster's Commentary:

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE FBI.

"[Your information is] too precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire plus the other information you brought spell out in detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap."

FBI response to the top British spy, Dusko Popov (code named "Tricycle") on August 10, 1941, dismissing Popov's report of the complete Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor: The Verdict Of History by Gordon Prange, appendix 7 published in 1986. Based on records from the JOINT CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Nov 15, 1945 to May 31, 1946.

A comment published in the Wall Street Journal entitled “Time to End the North Korean Threat” demonstrates that powerful sections of the American ruling elite are pressing for a far more aggressive strategy directed at nothing less than regime-change in Pyongyang—a policy that threatens to trigger World War III. The article’s author, Richard Haass, is a central figure in the US foreign policy establishment—a former director of foreign policy studies at the Democratic Party-aligned Brookings Institution and former top-level diplomat, who is currently president of the semi-official Council on Foreign Relations.

After reviewing the options against North Korea currently being aired, Haass writes: “These ideas are fine as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. The serious threat posed by North Korea far transcends cyberspace. Only one approach is commensurate with the challenge: ending North Korea’s existence as an independent entity and reunifying the Korean Peninsula.”

Webmaster's Commentary:

What such a military conflict would be about, would not be a war against North Korea, per se: it would be a back door to a war with China, which is treaty-bound to defend North Korea against outside aggression.

And why?!? Because both China's currency and military are on the ascendent.

But I would very much, politely, remind those precious few adults in the bowels of power in DC, that the US military, at this moment, does not have the money, the troop strength, or the manufacturing to insure a positive outcome to a conventional war against China, which Russia may well join on the Chinese side; and that is what makes the military scenario so scarily dangerous.

Mass public hysteria is being manufactured to justify aggression against Moscow and Pyongyang, in retaliation for acts attributed to the North Korean and Russian governments, but orchestrated and carried out by the CIA and the Pentagon.

On December 18, and in the subsequent December 22 Security Council meeting, the double standards within the United Nations are shockingly visible, and one can only gasp at the arrogance of the blatantly biased and politically motivated resolution A/69/488/Add.3 which “condemns the long-standing and ongoing systematic, widespread and gross violations of human rights in the DPRK.” The resolution condemning the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is clearly an attempt to eviscerate the socialist government of North Korea.

The use of allegations of human rights abuses by the United States, the world’s most powerful country, and the powerful country whose own documented record of criminal human rights abuses has just been published, causing revulsion and horror throughout the world, constitutes an assault on justice which so dishonors the United Nations that the adoption of this resolution condemning the DPRK can only be described as shameful.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The short answer posed by the title of this article is, "HELL, yes!".

And why?!? Because war with North Korea will translate into a war against China, which has both a national currency and military capabilities on the ascendent.

It is a war the US government and military may well lose; but just because an action is the most pig-headedly, ham-fistedly wrong thing the US government could possibly do is, unfortunately, absolutely no guarantee that it will not do such a thing.

Two issues are dealt with in the video below... 1) How NORSE has evidence that the SONY hack originated from within the US and; 2) How the United States is second only to China in being the originating location of attacks occurring right now INSIDE the United States.

Kurt Stammberger, a senior vice president of Norse, told CBS News "Sony was not just hacked, this is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside." Stammberger continues on to state "We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history."

North Korea's creaky internet crashed for nine hours on Monday, and is now mostly back up. This outage is probably no coincidence. Many observers assume that the Obama administration is behind it, retaliating to what the government called North Korean "cyber vandalism" aimed at Sony Pictures. That attack, as everyone knows, led Sony to cancel the release of a comedy, The Interview, about the assassination of North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong Un.

If President Obama did launch an undeclared cyberwar against North Korea, it may well be the equivalent of Bill Clinton launching cruise missiles at Osama bin Laden's empty training camps back in the 1990s. Clinton's salvo was never a real strategy to deal with a growing threat, and resulted only in intensified attacks. Obama may be making a similar mistake now.

Nothing like embarrassing America yet again like Obama going out and saying that we will be responding “proportionally” to the attack from North Korea and then finding out it might not have been them at all.

Sony will show The Interview on Christmas Day in theaters after all, suggesting that the entire farce could have been one huge cynical marketing campaign to promote the movie, bolstering the contention that the hack was an inside job.

The Daily Beast reported yesterday on leaked emails from the Sony hack which show that the United States government was involved at high levels with the content development of The Interview, especially its controversial ending depicting the assassination of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-Un. As the report’s headline states, “Sony Emails Say State Department Blessed Kim Jong-Un Assassination in ‘The Interview.’” The emails also reveal that a RAND corporation senior defense analyst who consulted on the film went beyond “blessing” and outright influenced the end of the film, encouraging the CEO of Sony Entertainment to leave the assassination scene as it was (in spite of misgivings at Sony) for the sake of encouraging North Koreans to actually assassinate Kim Jong-Un and depose his regime when the movie eventually leaks into that country.

The North Korean National Defense Commission, led by Kim Jong-un, says the Obama administration is behind the production of Sony Pictures’ “The Interview,” a film featuring the assassination of the North Korean president.

It is unlikely Obama was directly involved in the production of the movie, which Sony pulled after theaters were allegedly targeted.

A more likely collaborator is the CIA, known for working closely with Hollywood on propaganda projects.

“Black Hawk Dawn, Zero Dark Thirty and Argo, those are only a few major recent productions showing how today’s movie industry promotes US foreign policy,” writes Julie Lévesque. “But the motion picture has been used for propaganda since the beginning of the 20th century and Hollywood’s cooperation with the Department of Defense, the CIA and other government agencies is no modern trend.”

A lot of technology magazines are rather dubious at President Obama's accusations that it was the North Koreans that that it. Wired magazine, which is pretty well known for covering technology, says that it's akin to saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction to say the North Koreans had the capability to pull something like this off.

On Friday, the FBI released a statement blaming the North Korean government for the massive cyberattack against Sony last month. President Barack Obama also said over the weekend that he was considering re-adding North Korea to the United States' terrorist watch list.

But North Korea has continued to deny that it's behind the Sony breach, and the group that has claimed responsibility -- the hacking collective Guardians of Peace -- is mocking the FBI online, according to The Daily Beast. Some security researchers, as well as members of the hacktivist group Anonymous, are questioning whether there is enough evidence to blame North Korea at all.

"I have yet to see evidence of North Korea behind this," Kyle Wilhoit, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, a Japanese security firm, told HuffPost on Monday. Wilhoit argued that just because the FBI sees similarities between the code used in the Sony hack and other North Korean malware doesn't mean it was the same attacker.

China said on Monday it opposed all forms of cyberattacks but there was no proof that North Korea was responsible for the hacking of Sony Pictures, as the United States has said.

North Korea has denied it was to blame and has vowed to hit back against any U.S. retaliation, threatening the White House and the Pentagon. The hackers said they were incensed by a Sony comedy about a fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, which the studio has pulled.

Key North Korean websites were back online Tuesday after a nearly 10-hour shutdown that followed a U.S. vow to respond to a crippling cyberattack on Sony Pictures that Washington blames on Pyongyang.

It wasn't immediately clear what caused the Internet stoppage in one of the least-wired and poorest countries in the world, but outside experts said it could be anything from a cyberattack to a simple power failure. The White House and the State Department declined to say whether the U.S. government was responsible.

China said Tuesday there was no proof that North Korea was behind a cyberattack on Sony Pictures Entertainment, signaling its reluctance to side with the United States over the incident, while also rejecting speculation it could have cut off Pyongyang’s Internet access as punishment.

Asked about American requests for help from China to punish North Korea for cyberattacks, Hua Chunying, a spokeswoman for China’s foreign ministry, said the United States and North Korea needed to communicate directly.

She said Beijing had not seen proof of who was behind the attack on Sony. “We need sufficient evidence before drawing any conclusion,” she said at a news conference.

North Korea’s addresses are managed by Star Joint Venture, the state-run Internet provider, which routes many of those connections through China Unicom, China’s state-owned telecommunications company.?

North Korea’s already tenuous links to the Internet went completely dark on Monday after days of instability, in what Internet monitors described as one of the worst North Korean network failures in years.

The loss of service came just days after President Obama pledged that the United States would launch a “proportional response” to the recent attacks on Sony Pictures, which government officials have linked to North Korea. While an attack on North Korea’s networks was suspected, there was no definitive evidence of it.

Webmaster's Commentary:

So now when the US takes down the power grid, they will claim this is North Korea's "retaliation" for the DDOS attack.

But as much as Sony seemed to mishandle its sorry situation in recent days, the severity of the circumstances Sony faced are so extreme that it begs the question of whether anyone could have handled it better. Every step of the way Sony has been faced with no-win situations and just plain bad luck.

Just when things couldn’t have looked any worse for the studio, President Obama turned sharply critical of Sony in a news conference Friday, second-guessing its decision to withdraw “The Interview” from theaters.

The government blames North Korea of the Axis of Evil for the attack on Sony, a claim quite like the bogus claims of the past we so credulously believed. No matter how often they lie to us, Americans believe what the government tells us. They lie, we believe, their lies are exposed — rinse, repeat. It makes us easy to govern, incapable of self-government, and quite different than our skeptical unruly forebearers. We can do better. This is a great day to begin. Read this and decide for yourself. This is the most complete collection of information I’ve found on this story.

Having confirmed unequivocally, in a statement by the FBI and reiterated by President Obama, that “the North Korean government is responsible” for hacking Sony, it appears the YouTube-less ‘evidence’ the FBI provided is being questioned by the hacking-collective ‘Anonymous’ and former Lulzsec hacker Sabu. As The Daily Beast reports, the hackers blasted, the North Koreans “don’t have the technical capabilities,” and added “we all know the hacks didn’t come from North Korea, and “all of the evidence FBI cites would be trivial things to do if a hacker was trying to misdirect attention to DPRK.” Meanwhile, on Saturday afternoon, Guardians of Peace, the hacking group that’s so far claimed responsibility for wreaking havoc on Sony, posted a message online mocking the FBI’s investigation – a series of gyrating animated bodies shrieking, “You are an idiot!”

Webmaster's Commentary:

GREAT MOMENTS IN THE HISTORY OF THE FBI.

"[Your information is] too precise, too complete to be believed. The questionnaire plus the other information you brought spell out in detail exactly where, when, how, and by whom we are to be attacked. If anything, it sounds like a trap."

FBI response to the top British spy, Dusko Popov (code named "Tricycle") on August 10, 1941, dismissing Popov's report of the complete Japanese plan for the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor: The Verdict Of History by Gordon Prange, appendix 7 published in 1986. Based on records from the JOINT CONGRESSIONAL COMMITTEE on the Investigation of the Pearl Harbor Attack, Nov 15, 1945 to May 31, 1946.

N. Korea has demanded an apology from the US for “recklessly” circulating an unsubstantiated rumor about Pyongyang’s culpability in the recent Sony hack, warning the “proportional” response promised by Obama will be met with the “toughest counteraction.”

President Obama said Sunday he does not consider North Korea’s attack on Sony Pictures to be an “act of war,” instead calling it an example of “cybervandalism” that must be met with a proportional response from the U.S. government.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Of course, if those gosh darn North Koreans (with help from Russia, China, and Iran) do something worse, like shut down the non-commercial internet or black out a few cities, that is another kettle of kimchee altogether!" -- Official White Horse Souse

US official states that North Korea responsible for hacking of Sony over The Interview film – and that Kim Jong-un's regime may have had Chinese help

Webmaster's Commentary:

So, according to US Officials and FOX News, North Korea, China, Russia, Iran, (and everyone else the US needs an excuse to invade) secretly create the most potent cyber-army in the world, then expose the existence of that cyber-army with a pointless attack on a movie studio?

And if you believe THAT one, I have some of Saddam's nuclear weapons to sell you!

North Korea said U.S. accusations that it was involved in a cyberattack on Sony Pictures were "groundless slander" and that it was wanted a joint investigation into the incident with the United States.

An unnamed spokesman of the North's foreign ministry said there would be "grave consequences" if Washington refused to agree to the joint probe and continued to accuse Pyongyang, the official KCNA news agency reported on Saturday.

On Friday, President Barack Obama blamed North Korea for the devastating cyberattack, which led to the Hollywood studio cancelling "The Interview", a comedy on the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

The FBI said Friday that North Korea is responsible for the cyberattack on Sony Pictures that led the studio to cancel the release of a movie.

Confirming what government officials were saying privately for days, the FBI announced that is months-long investigation concluded that North Korea was behind the attack, based on technical similarities to previous attacks.

Webmaster's Commentary:

"Those previous hacks used computers, and we believe the SONY hackers were also using computers. That's good enough for me!" -- Official White Horse Souse

North Korea has been blamed for a string of hacks in the past, and it’s generally accepted that the country has the capability to hack and attack companies. But no previous attack attributed to North Korea—or any nation-state—has been so public and so noisy. In the past, attacks happened, North Korea was suspected, and then sometimes the country was later blamed. It rarely said anything, except for an initial denial. This time around, the hacker group has posted messages online taunting Sony and telling the FBI they cannot be caught. Early on, they were also interacting with reporters.

The evidence indicates the SONY hack was done by disgruntled ex-employees of SONY itself. Yet the White House has hastily put together a frame-up of North Korea, and unlike the Benghazi attack, the movie that is supposed to be the root cause of it all actually does exist.

So what is going on?

One possibility is that SONY will reverse its decision (under covert pressure from the White House) and go ahead with the Christmas Day release of "The Interview." This will be followed by multiple bombings of movie theaters across America. Just like 9-11, this will be "justification" for war against the "attacker", which we are being assured is North Korea. War with North Korea opens the door to war with China and through China, Russia, all to protect the paper dollar from the Ruble and the Yuan. Millions will die and the world will go back to being enslaved to the private central bankers for another hundred years.

North Korea sent special forces teams to the US in the 1990s to target nuclear power stations and conduct terror attacks on major cities in the event of war, a declassified intelligence report has revealed.

Webmaster's Commentary:

The timing of this declassified report is just too cute. This is more evidence that the US plans to attack North Korea to open a door to war with China.Click for larger image

The South Korean military began its annual war exercise involving all branches of service on Monday to bolster its defense posture against potential threats from North Korea, the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) said.

This year’s 12-day Hoguk exercise involving the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps “will focus on ways to establish supreme military defense capabilities against (North Korea’s) possible regional provocations and all-out war,” the JCS said in a statement.

The exercise was to be conducted across the nation, the JCS said, adding that the programs include joint landing drills, maritime infiltration defense drills and those to defend the northwestern islands on the Yellow Sea. Some U.S. military forces will also join some of the drills, according to the JCS.

Webmaster's Commentary:

300,000 military in a drill that will last about two weeks?!?

This is very, very significant; and the larger, and longer, an exercise like this takes place, the larger the chance of some error, "accidentally" triggering a North Korean military response, and Chinese involvement on the North Korean side.

North Korea has announced that it will not accept any foreign tourists beginning Friday because of fear of the Ebola virus, three agencies that take tourists to the isolated country said on Thursday.

The news came as the country said it was stepping up inspections and quarantine measures at its airport, borders and ports to guard against the spread of the deadly virus, which has killed thousands of people in the latest outbreak.

“Three days ago, they said that anybody who’s been to West Africa would have to provide a doctor’s certificate stating that they don’t have Ebola,” said Gareth Johnson of Young Pioneer Tours, a travel operator based in China. “And then today, they just said no foreign tourists at all.”

The South Korean military said Monday it has deployed additional weapons to islands near the tense western maritime border to better deal with North Korea’s growing threats.

The disputed sea border remains a powder keg with the two Koreas fighting bloody battles there in 1999, 2002 and 2009. In the latest incident, both sides briefly exchanged fire last week as a boat from the North violated the Northern Limit Line (NLL).

Drawn by the U.S.-led United Nations Command at the end of the 1950-53 Korean War, the NLL acts as the de facto sea border between the two Koreas, but Pyongyang does not recognize the border.

Webmaster's Commentary:

I would like to hope that cooler heads on both sides of the DMZ will prevail, and that they will take every step possible to ratchet down tensions here.

The mystery surrounding the whereabouts of Kim Jong Un deepened Friday after the North Korean leader appeared to have missed a ceremony to pay tribute to his late father and grandfather on what is an important national anniversary.

The Country’s Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), a powerful group of officials, have stopped taking orders from Kim Jong-un. A battle is simmering between factions within the OGD.

North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un went missing this week.
The media said he was recovering from ankle surgery.
There are also reports that Kim Jong Un’s sister is now running the country.
Market Watch says his sister is running the country.